The present invention relates to the cleaning of tubes and pipes of power plant equipment and machines such as boilers, chillers, condensers, heat exchangers, absorption machines and so forth.
In normal operation, the operating tubes and pipes installed in such power plant equipment and machines become coated with deposits such as soot in the case of fire tube boilers or boiler compound in the case of water tube boilers which over time reduce operating efficiency to a point that the equipment must be taken out of operation for tube cleaning. In tube cleaning, an operator uses commercially available equipment such as the Ream-A-Matic made and sold by the assignee of this invention. The Ream-A-Matic utilizes a rotating brush and water flush device which the operator inserts and hand feeds into each tube. Hand feeding of the rotating brush is assisted by rotating the brush in the direction of brush twist into the tube and reversing brush rotation for withdrawal from each tube in a manner very similar to screw rotation. Nonetheless, the cleaning operation is essentially one of hand feeding the device the full length of tubes measuring up to fifty feet in length. The cleaning operation is time consuming even as the the device performs a thorough cleaning of each tube.
When this kind of cleaning is performed the entire plant must be shut down and, often, a full maintenance schedule is carried out for a piece of equipment or for the entire plant. Because of the economic loss sustained during plant shutdown it is imperative that the maintenance schedule be completed as quickly as possible. For example, in a typical electrical utility, hourly loss of power generation revenue is approximately $50,000 during plant shutdown so there is considerable incentive for rapid as well as thorough performance of the maintenance schedule.
The present invention provides an apparatus for substantially reducing the time required for cleaning power plant tubes and pipes without compromising the thoroughness of the cleaning operation.